Page 47 of Lucky or Knot

Besides, I’d spent last night, after I’d gotten off the phone with Blake, making some alternate arrangements for transportation.

My buddy’s cousin’s girlfriend the part-time concierge still hadn’t gotten back from her trip to Mexico, but she’d responded to my desperate, begging text messages from a poolside bar, according to the photo she’d also sent me of sparkling blue water viewed through a sparkling blue cocktail. She hadn’t spent a ton of time in the fanciest parts of the hotel, but she’d given me a few pointers on how the staff got in and out, and a couple of shortcuts through the labyrinth of service corridors that crisscrossed Audacity’s multiple buildings.

And with that information jotted down, I’d had to text Sean again, hat in hand. After a tense negotiation, he’d agreed to leave one of the valeted cars, unlocked with the keys in theglove box, in a discreet corner of the parking garage near a set of emergency stairs. Only my oaths, on my life, that I’d get him a job at either the Morrigan or Lucky or Knot when he inevitably got fired for negligence convinced him to agree.

Also, it sounded like he had his eye on a specific casino regular’s car. It really didn’t pay to piss off the valets, it turned out.

“So I met this big cat trainer guy because I broke up a fight he was having with his brother at a roulette table at the Morrigan,” Blake began as he started the car.

And then he was off to the races, chatting to me about all the craziness he’d seen at Declan’s casino, about how he missed rainy weather and generally spending time outside living in Vegas, and which fancy restaurants in town—exactly zero of which I could afford to eat at—had the best cheesecake, ranked as a top five with two honorable mentions. Good thing Declan had a lot of money, because Blake sounded eager to spend it. To be fair, he also couldn’t say Declan’s name without smiling and turning pink, and he smelled the way Declan did: like contentment, satisfaction…love.

Envy gnawed at my guts. I’d give a lot to make Raven look and smell that way when he talked about me. Declan and Blake hadn’t had the easiest path to a deliriously happy mating, though, so maybe there was hope for me yet.

Blake didn’t seem to need any replies to his nonsense, so I tuned him out, staring out the window at the passing suburbs. All I saw was Raven. I’d dreamed about him the night before during what little fitful sleep I’d managed to get. He’d walked away from me, and I’d called his name and chased him until I fell into a pit and woke up.

Finally it dawned on me that Blake had fallen silent.

“I’m sorry,” I managed. “The, um. I’ll have to try it sometime.”

“I wasn’t talking about cheesecake anymore,” Blake said after a second. “But if you really want to try Declan giving you a foot massage while you drink martinis, I guess you could ask him.”

My head whipped around and I stared at him, unable to tell if he was fucking with me or not.

“You weren’t really talking about that.” I was glad I’d missed it, if so. Some things, you just didn’t want to know about another dude.

Blake grimaced. “Yeah, actually I was. You weren’t listening, so I wanted to see how far I could go before you noticed. Sorry. Not sorry? Anyway, I get why you’re so distracted. I genuinely am sorry about that, and I wish I could do more besides wish you luck tonight. Declan actually wanted to help you, not sure if you picked up on that. But he has a lot of enemies, and he can’t afford to stir them up, not while he’s still getting the new Morrigan off the ground. Also, he didn’t think he could morally justify helping you get yourself killed.”

“You’re doing enough. I can’t believe you figured out who Cunningham hired for entertainment tonight, and managed to get him to agree to this.”

Blake shrugged. “He owes me. Also, you know. People tend to talk to me. I hear all kinds of things about what’s going on in town.”

“I owe you too, now,” I said, and meant it.

Crazy or not, Blake’s plan promised to get me into the party, anonymous and unsuspected. The edible spellbag on which I’d spent the money I should’ve given Louie would make me smell like a normal, non-shifter tiger, fooling all of the supernatural beings who’d be present at Cunningham’s party. Blake’s acquaintance the trainer had agreed to leave his regular tiger at home and take me along in its place to—I didn’t know what, exactly. Perform on a stage? Surely I could do that as wellin my tiger body as I could in my human body. Hopefully they wouldn’t want me to wear glitter or shake my ass, because that’d be a really fucked-up party.

In a few hours, I’d be in the same room as Raven. At least, I hoped and prayed I would be, and that he hadn’t been locked up somewhere, or hurt too badly to appear in public—and no, I had to shut that train of thought down before I lost my shit.

Blake shifted a little in his seat, probably smelling my anger, or simply feeling it in the air. “I’m sorry again,” I said. “I keep thinking about him. About what could be going on. I’ll keep it together.”

“Declan had to bail me out of some trouble one time.” Blake’s tone suggested a massive understatement, there. “He thought it was his fault. It kind of was his fault, actually. But he was so fucking worked up—I get where you’re coming from, Tony. And I promise we both have your back if you need it. Declan might not have wanted to encourage you to get yourself in trouble over a fae who probably wouldn’t reciprocate, but I’ll talk to him later on tonight once it’s too late for him to do anything about it except wait to see what happens. If he gets mad, I’ll work my magic.”

Oh, and there was an image I both did and didn’t want. There didn’t seem to be much to say to that except thanks, and Blake managed to keep his mouth shut until we pulled up in the dusty driveway of a small ranch and circus training facility on the edge of where the suburbs became the desert.

A short, crazy-haired young guy in a white suit who seemed way too nervous and jumpy to work with big cats came out to meet us, shook our hands, introduced himself as Axel, and ushered us into a large barn. There weren’t any actual cats present, unless you counted me, but there was one of those livestock trailers like you’d see on the freeway carrying horses around, only much sturdier.

“So we’ll take this to Audacity,” Axel said. “Like I talked about with Blake on the phone, we need to head over pretty soon, and we won’t have a lot of time to prepare once we get there. My team’s already on their way, they’ll do all the setup, so it’ll just be us in the trailer, in case you, um. I don’t know, need to change back for some reason? The tigers I work with respond to voice commands, so I guess that won’t be a problem, right? I mean, you understand English as a tiger?”

My instinctive revulsion for the cage-trailer must’ve shown on my face, because Blake smoothly stepped in between me and Axel, hiding my reaction, and said, maybe a little bit pointedly, “Tony’s a professional stage performer in his human form, so you’ll be able to work smoothly together. I know,” and he cleared his throat and glared at me, a lot pointedly, “that you have a reputation as a tiger trainer and that you’re doing us both a favor, so just tell Tony what the schedule is and what’s next. And hey, he won’t bite you if he’s in a bad mood, so win win.”

Axel nodded, looking less like he’d run away any second now. Blake really did have a gift with people when he wanted to, seemed like.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I muttered, low enough for only other alpha shifter ears to pick it up.

Blake’s lips twitched. “Behave,” he whispered back, and followed Axel, volubly running through all the polite small talk that I simply couldn’t manage.

Christ. A fucking cage on wheels. Voice commands? I mean, this was demeaning for a non-sentient tiger, let alone a weretiger. Maybe a rabbit or something, they didn’t have any dignity to lose. But a tiger? An apex predator? Ugh.

Raven’s smile as he pointed out that I didn’t have a lot of dignity left to lose flashed through my mind, and that little aching knot under my sternum that hadn’t gone away since I saw him last gave a twist and a throb.

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